Six Nations 2013, Wales v England: George North, the calm colossus with the midas touch

George North is not just an exceptional rugby player, the one with perhaps the
greatest potential to dynamite England’s Grand Slam dreams in Cardiff on
Saturday. Listening to his girlfriend Becky James, it sounds as if he would
make a fine sports psychologist too.

Fast show: wing George North is almost certain to go on Lions tour
Photo: PA

James, Welsh sport’s brightest new star who will be cheering for North at the Millennium Stadium on Saturday, can now reveal how his soothing influence played a key part in transforming her from a nerves-riddled contender into a double world track cycling champion in Minsk last month.

“I found it so overwhelming and I got so emotional when I was racing that nerves took over. So there’d be times when I’d say to George: ‘Oh, I’m so nervous I don’t know what to do.’ And he’s just like: ‘It’s OK, you’ll be fine. You’ve done your training, you’re in form, go out and enjoy it and do your best.’ In Minsk, this was the first race where I’ve ever just been really calm and talking with George definitely helped. He is very calm and chilled out and he makes me so much more relaxed.”

This week, though, the favour has needed to be reciprocated. The pressure is off for James, just back from a holiday in Argentina, and North admits that “come Saturday, Becky will be the one with the cool head talking to me”. Except, mercifully, without the sort of terrible jokes he uses to distract her.

Cutting the tension with a laugh and not treating sport as the be all and end all; these qualities serve the immensely likeable North well as he laughs cheerily about trying to keep cool even when the bloke on the Cardiff omnibus is urging him to go out against England and “smash their heads in”.

“The way I’ve always dealt with pressure in sport is to cut the emotion out of it,” he says. You would like to imagine he learned this from his English-born dad, except of course the world now knows exactly how unemotional John North is following his magnificent Parisian pitch-crashing sprint to hug his boy after he nailed the winning try against France.

Of course, North has not heard the last of this. Every time he now scores a try in practice the cry of “Look out for George’s dad!” rings gleefully across the training ground.

When he talks about the episode, though, it is with a lovely mix of exasperation and affection. “I’ve got him tickets in the back of the stand so he can’t get anywhere near the pitch and I’ve told him that if he comes on this time, I’m going to clout him!” North says with a rueful grin. He has, he assures us, a bit more control than his dad.

Part of that doubtless stems from how both he and James, the golden, but extremely down-to-earth couple of Welsh sport, swear by the power of psychology to help them negotiate the ups and downs of careers which soared in tandem last month when North came off the pitch after victory over Italy in Rome to learn she had become world champion.

James conquered her nerves mainly through the help of British cycling performance psychologist Dave Readle while North gets his “mind right” for Tests by sessions with Andy McCann, adviser to the the Welsh team. Whatever tips the pair get from these experts to hone their mental approach, they share.

“We’re quite different, though,” James insists. “George gets more excited before competition but doesn’t get as nervous as I do.”

North’s equable temperament has helped him to deal with stardom since he became an instant jet-heeled phenomenon for Wales, scoring twice on his debut against then world champions South Africa at just 18. His career as a wing powerhouse has taken in enough peaks and troughs to make it hard to credit he only turns 21 next month. He cannot quite believe it himself. “I’ve been through the mill. I feel about 28,” he says with a laugh.

After the Grand Slam triumph last year, North seemed so infallibly brilliant that even now he laughs at an internet tribute which portrayed him as an 8ft colossus being carried on a golden throne by dozens of scantily clad young women to the top table in Cardiff Castle’s banqueting hall.

“Oh, I took some stick from the boys after that,” he recalls, just as he remembers how within eight months he was walking into restaurants in Cardiff during the height of disenchantment about Wales’s eight-Test losing sequence only to be given lectures from waiters about how useless he was. Instead of getting upset, North’s way was just to shrug it off. “Well, this is Test rugby,” he says. “One game, you can be carried on that golden throne; the next, people are throwing pooh-pooh at you. You never know, do you?”

For someone who scored nine tries in his first 12 Tests and only three more in his subsequent 18, he has become used to the bouquets and brickbats but his philosophy, both during the try drought and now as the nailed-on Lion who has beaten more defenders during this Six Nations campaign than anyone else in Saturday’s match, has always remained refreshingly simple.

“I like a stat as much as the next man. But at the end of the day, my aim is just to be in the picture, get my hands on the ball and then run like hell!” If the calm colossus does unleash hell, one crazy dad, one proud girlfriend and one golden throne awaits.